Systems Thinking Perspective to Enhance Situational Awareness in Response to Crisis Situations

Dear Colleagues,

Systems thinking is a methodological approach to understanding the “big picture”, and to managing emergent behavior, unintended consequences, and non-linear behavior in systems and problems of all scales. Systems thinking has broad applications in modern systems and problems, emphasizing mental models and the simultaneity of perspectives, the role of paradox, and the centrality of soft issues in resolving complexity. Systems thinking also provides a rich set of tools and concepts such as systems dynamics, systems archetypes, leverage points analysis, and soft systems methods, especially as they relate to understanding the development and behaviors of complex enterprise systems and systems of systems. This toolbox facilitates the creation of innovative solutions and course of action prioritization based on various scenarios. Related to both the system understanding and problem solution is situation awareness. Endsley defines situation awareness as the continuous extraction of environmental data and their integration with previous knowledge to form a coherent mental picture which is used to perceive, comprehend and project future events.

This Special Issue call for papers focuses on systems thinking, Endsley’s model of situation awareness, systems engineering/dynamics, complexity theory, and sensemaking. Preference will be given to real-world case studies in a wide range of areas such as supply chain and bullwhip disruptions; healthcare, especially during pandemics; education reform; law-enforcement; disaster prevention and response; etc.

Dr. Michael Naor
Dr. Sigal Koral-Kordova
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Systems is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.